An Author Went to Iraq, and Now Will Stand Trial for Theft

By EDDY RAMÍREZ

Published: August 2, 2004

Joseph Braude said his visit to Iraq last summer was as much about reconnecting with his past, visiting the neighborhood where his mother was born, as it was about getting information to update a book he had written about rebuilding the country.

But a trial against him begins today in Federal District Court in Brooklyn because the United States attorney's office contends he returned to New York with much more than research. Mr. Braude, 29, faces charges of smuggling three 4,000-year-old cylindrical marble and alabaster stone seals. The relics, decorated with human and animal figures, had been part of a collection at the Iraqi National Museum, which was looted after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

He also is accused of lying to customs officials at Kennedy Airport in June 2003, saying that he had not been to Iraq, when he was first questioned about the seals, which were found in a plastic bag in his suitcase.

He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

Mr. Braude's case has attracted the attention of legal experts and prominent government figures, including a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, R. James Woolsey, who met Mr. Braude more than a year ago to discuss ideas proposed in Mr. Braude's book. A graduate of Yale and Princeton, Mr. Braude spent much of the last decade traveling throughout the Arab world and became fluent in Arabic, Persian and Hebrew. He worked at an Islamic archive in the United Arab Emirates, where he helped recover and preserve antique Arabic manuscripts.

His lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said last week that his client was not guilty. Mr. Braude spoke to a reporter in Mr. Brafman's office last week on the condition that he would not answer questions about the charges against him. He did say, however, that he is just as outraged as prosecutors about the pilfering of Iraq's antiquities.

Mr. Braude, a United States citizen, said his great-great-grandfather was the last chief rabbi of a once-thriving Jewish community in Baghdad. He wrote a book before the war about how to rebuild Iraq once Saddam Hussein was toppled. After coalition forces gained control of the country, he said, he visited Iraq in June 2003 to write an introduction to a revised paperback version of the book, "The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for its People, the Middle East and the World."

"And I wanted - really above all - to taste, smell and feel the place for myself and gauge how I would feel about spending a very long time there," he said.

Mr. Braude said he also was looking to find work with the United States government at what was then the Office of Reconstruction in Baghdad. He even considered starting an Arabic- and English-language newspaper there.

"I wanted to implement some of the ideas I had explored in the book and be a constructive person on the ground," said Mr. Braude, who lives in Providence, R.I.

Federal prosecutors would not comment, but court documents offered the government's version of what occurred when Mr. Braude was in Iraq and at Kennedy Airport when he returned.

According to the report from the two customs agents who questioned him, Mr. Braude entered Iraq on a journalist's visa he had obtained from authorities in Kuwait.

The agents indicated that Mr. Braude and an Iraqi who was acting as his guide had discussed the looting of the Iraqi National Museum, and had "decided it would be a good idea to meet with one of these black market merchants and acquire some of these items instead of letting another private collector get the items only to hoard them."

The next day, the report said, Mr. Braude met with a young Iraqi man dressed in "Western clothing" who was introduced to him as "Mohammed, the king of the black market."

Mohammed arrived with a large plastic bag, and, "with an eager smile," pulled out a dozen cylinder seals and placed them on a table before Mr. Braude. The report said that Mr. Braude was unsure of the exact value of the items, but after a little haggling, he agreed to pay $200 for two of the smallest seals. Once the deal was made, the merchant "let Mr. Braude have a third seal of his choice for free."

The report said that Mr. Braude had not declared the stone seals on his customs declaration form and that he told agents that he had not been in Iraq. But later, the agents said, he "admitted that he had indeed traveled to Iraq and had acquired these items from Baghdad." Mr. Braude told the agents "his intention was to have the (seals) appraised here in the U.S.," the report said, and "that once he got them appraised, he was going to turn them over to the proper authorities."

Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a Marine who heads the international investigation into the theft of artifacts from Iraq, is expected to testify against Mr. Braude. Colonel Bogdanos declined to comment on Mr. Braude, but he said that the search for Iraqi artifacts was continuing.

Colonel Bogdanos estimated that 13,000 artifacts were stolen from the Iraqi museums and other archeological sites after the war. Of those, 5,000 have been recovered, many of them from neighboring countries, some from Britain and the United States.

"There are another 8,000 pieces out there, and that devastates me," Colonel Bogdanos said. "Any one of them is a priceless piece of shared human heritage."

The United States military was heavily criticized for not doing more to stop the looting of Iraqi museums after Mr. Hussein lost his grip on the country.

Mr. Woolsey, the former C.I.A. director, said that he was "extremely surprised" when he learned that Mr. Braude was being charged with smuggling artifacts. Mr. Braude had quietly assisted the United States in counterterrorism operations during his education at Yale and Princeton and later as a consultant.

"I'm aware that he has been helpful to the U.S. government on matters related to terrorism," said Mr. Woolsey, adding that Mr. Braude had expressed a willingness in helping Iraqis to build a free press. "He's very interested in the cultural underpinnings of establishing a democracy and a free society,'' he said. Mr. Woolsey said that, whatever the trial's outcome, people should "not run away from what I think is an excellent set of ideas about Iraq's future."

Charles R. Nesson, who teaches evidence and digital technology law at Harvard Law School, met Mr. Braude two years ago and said he has become "absorbed" with his case. He said that he did not know of any other case in which the government had sought to prosecute someone for smuggling items that he said might be worth no more than a few hundred dollars.

"I just got the sense that this kid was being railroaded," he said. "Why they're pursuing it like a major felony feels like serious overkill to me."

The United States attorney's office said that it would prosecute anyone who tries to smuggle artifacts, no matter the value. Last year, when the charges against Mr. Braude were announced, Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said, "This administration sent a clear signal that we would not allow thieves to take advantage of the conflict in Iraq to pilfer its antiquities.''

The question that seems likely to be raised at the trial is what Mr. Braude's intentions were. Was he pilfering the seals for his own uses? Or did he plan, as the custom agents say he told them, to turn them over to the proper authorities?

During the interview, Mr. Braude recalled a saying translated from Hebrew that seemed to touch upon the issue: "First we will do and then we will listen."

Mr. Braude then explained, "And that is so fervently within their desire to do the right thing, that they found themselves doing things even before being instructed to do so."